Author: Heather Bobrowicz

My First Conference (as an academic librarian)

I promise I did not vanish into the abyss. I did, however, disappear into an incredibly busy March and April and I offer profound apologies to my fellow ACRL bloggers, though I’m quite sure they understand how these things go in the wild world of libraries.

TLA 2022 in Forth Worth, TX. April 25-28. Theme: Recover, Rebalance, Reconnect.

One of the many events that consumed me during these past two months was the Texas Libraries Association conference, AKA TLA2022. If you are a member of #LibraryTwitter, you might be familiar with the controversy that was stirred up by one of the keynote speakers, Alyssa Edwards. I was unfortunately unable to go to this keynote due to a very long and tiring day waiting in lines (Sidenote: What do conference organizers have against chairs? I haven’t been able to sit on the floor without a monumental effort to get up again since undergrad. Do not make people stand in lines for hours! It’s not acceptable or disability inclusive or okay! Geez!) but the issue was echoed again and again in each session I did attend. Libraries are being badgered by bigots, zealots, and busybodies who jump on us the moment we show any support to LGBTQ communities.

It’s not as bad in academic libraries. My colleagues in public libraries and especially those in school libraries are taking the brunt of the abuse. However, the field itself is having a reckoning, if the thrust of nearly every main session at TLA is any indication. I attended sessions each day, and book banning and challenges, patrons abusing staff, programs being canceled and boycotted, and constant, aggressive censorship was a topic brought up at almost every one of them. Even while I was busily networking in the Exhibition Hall, my main goal of the conference, I saw it everywhere. The air hummed both with the tension of the amount of pressure librarians and library staff are under as well as understanding. Every time a speaker acknowledged how hard this has been on us, professionally, physically, emotionally, I could feel waves of relief coming off those surrounding me. I got it. I’m lucky to have a partner who is also a librarian, so he understands. But how many of the people I encountered at that conference had felt isolated in their struggles? If your family, friends, even colleagues just don’t grasp the severity of the anxiety you live in day after day, that the one book you order or the one event you plan is going to set off a tidal wave of complaints, how amazing must it feel to finally have someone recognize it? And not only that, but someone on stage, holding a microphone, speaking with authority?

Nadine Strossen addressed the audience of librarians during her mid-conference keynote when she said, “In the land of the free and the home of the brave, it should not take courage to be so brave to do your job.” And all I could think was yes, yes, thank you! Thank you for acknowledging what the people around me have been doing. Thank you for speaking that truth to the people who really needed to hear it.

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention how amazing Ibram X. Kendi’s session was.

TLA did my heart good. I took a risk by going, I know I did. Large gatherings like this are going to be a gamble for a while with the COVID pandemic still in full swing. We did have protections in place, particularly either a vaccination record or clear test being required to enter the convention center, but in the end I’m very happy that I went and experienced this validation. No, I’m not on the front lines of this fight, but I’m also not so sheltered that I can ignore it (nor insist on continued oppression-favoring neutrality like some  members of our field). It was a memorable and important first conference for me in my academic librarian career. I’m hoping to attend more in the future, especially because I don’t see today’s problems going away any time soon. I’m going to keep my head in the game to support fellow library workers. We all need each other right now, that’s how we make it through this.

One step at a time.

Adulting 101

One of the biggest shifts I’ve had to make since changing jobs has been reframing my thinking around the audience for any resources. I spent a good chunk of my professional “growing years” as a children’s librarian, and therefor have internalized a lot of stuff that mostly applies to kids. Simple language, simple topics, bright colors, bold images. I’ve started dipping my toe into the world of creation for college students and have had to fight back the urge to simplify too much. Yes, I can use cursive fonts if I want and our patrons will be able to read them. (And no, lessons on the art of cursive writing are not going away! Not yet, anyway.)

Another change in my thought process has come from brainstorming what younger adults need versus what the ten-and-under population need from the library. I spent a lot of time at my previous job making booklists that categorized books by AR reading level—a system I don’t necessarily support in a professional capacity but completely understand why parents were so thankful I had a list of 15+ 3.0-3.9 books ready to go and organized by author name. Booklists aren’t so much in demand on a college campus, partially because students get their research help from reference and searching our databases and who really has time to read a whole book when pursuing a college degree? I know I didn’t.

So instead, I decided to create something that might present some value to our students, provided I can get it into their hands: a guide to adulting.

For those of you who don’t speak Millennial, Time has a nice article on what “adulting” means, and why its use has grown exponentially in the past few years. Basically, it’s a blanket term for all those things you find yourself doing when you are an independent person living on your own, from the mundane (laundry), to the unforeseen (fixing a broken washing machine), to the ridiculous (cleaning your washing machine on a weekly basis so hopefully it never breaks again and coming to enjoy the process at some point for reasons you cannot explain).

If you want a more thorough look at the etymology of the word, Merriam-Webster has you covered. And if you want more pithy, quotable examples, I recommend Twitter.

Tweet by @rashida_farhath: Adulting is being tired even after getting 8 hours of sleep
https://twitter.com/rashida_farhath

I’m utilizing LibGuides for this Adulting 101 resource list, and while I’m not ready to unleash it onto the world just yet, I can give you a small preview of what lies within the unpublished drafts. Before I started my guide, I did some Googling, and found that I’m certainly not the first academic librarian to see this kind of a guide as useful. I’ve actually referred back to quite a few LibGuides, including:

And there are many more out there, no doubt. In fact, if you know of one with some great resources, feel free to comment here or send it my way.

So far, I’ve divided the guide into 5 sections: Housekeeping, Digital Citizenship, Food & Nutrition, Finances, and Jobs & Career. I’m about 75% of the way through filling in all the information, then I’ll be able to put the polish on the final result and get it published to our Research Guides.

Adulting 101: Harder than we all thought, right?
Header for the Adulting 101 Libguide, as made in Canva.

While I really hope students can use and benefit from the information I’m giving them in this guide, what I really hope to accomplish is a little subtler. One of my goals as a Programming Librarian is to foster a sense of belonging at out libraries, and I’m hoping that providing this kind of information to students who may be living on their own for the first time in their lives, they feel supported and seen. There seems to be an expectation that you understand how to do everything on your own the moment you start attending college (especially for women, but that’s too big to unpack here). How often do you hear about college students not knowing how to use a laundromat, though? Or filling their dishwasher with dish soap and flooding their apartment? Or having their utilities shut off because they didn’t realize power wasn’t included in their rent?

I’ve been spending more time on TikTok lately. I hear these stories there.

So if I can provide information to a student on renter’s insurance, how to clean an oven, what future employers look for on their social media, and how to avoid bouncing a check, it’s so worth the time and effort to do so.

Maybe eventually someone will be as thankful for my adulting guide as those parents were for those AR level booklists. And this feels far less like a compromise of my principles.

Impending Building Renovations

So last year when I started writing for the ACRL Blog, my first post was about the tightrope I was walking trying to balance programming during a pandemic. Things started to look up during fall semester, mostly because my college was able to lift some COVID restrictions. However, with the Omicron surge in our area, the campus administration has made the decision to re-implement some policies and procedures. We’re back to rotating work from home, and I expect to hear more about classes shifting from face-to-face and back to online. So, we’re back on the tightrope. But here’s the thing: We also have an upcoming building renovation.

Facepalm | rue89.nouvelobs.com/2016/10/17/proces-dune-ado-co… | Flickr
Facepalm, by Luigi Rosa

This has been in the works since long before the pandemic, and our library needs it. However, this has thrown a significant wrench into planning, well, anything. The timing for National Library Week (which we always try to celebrate) makes it even tougher. My team is looking to move out of our building around the same time, then we have a semester break, and then I’m off to the Texas Library Association’s conference! April is going to be crazy!

Staring all this down at the beginning of the semester plus the back-and-forth of COVID-19 is a lot. So far, my coping strategy has been taking things one week at a time. I have most my contracts in for guest speakers, and I’m working on planning two more events for National Library Week. This week’s goal is to arrange a speaker from the Library of Congress (fingers crossed!), and next week’s is to start the process of getting a virtual author panel together.

Breaking events down into smaller, manageable tasks isn’t a new idea to me, but I really like planning months ahead! Resisting the urge to set everything in stone hasn’t been easy. I sincerely don’t know where I will be in a few months’ time, though, both physically and mentally. Will we still be dealing with variant surges? Will I be on another campus? Will everything be pushed back as it has in the past? On-campus, off-campus? As a female role-model from my childhood would say: ACK!

Wherein the author dates herself with a Cathy reference. Cathy is copyright Cathy Guisewite. https://www.cathyguisewite.com/

I don’t have the answers for any of that. I’m learning to be better about not knowing. As anyone in librarianship probably understands, not knowing something is anxiety-making for me, but I can’t research my way out of the uncertainty.

At least I know I’m not alone. I hope everyone else is handling the balancing act we’ve found ourselves in as we start a new semester. We can do this!

Finals Week is Different Now

It will be ten years since I earned a Bachelor’s degree this upcoming May. In 2012, I graduated from the University of New Mexico where I had attended classes in person since 2009. And while that both feels like forever ago and like it happened yesterday, I do remember one particular aspect of college student life:

Finals Week.

A pink blobby person says "oh no." An arrow pointing to them says "you."
The Oh No blob, copyright Alex Norris. https://www.instagram.com/webcomic_name

As a new academic librarian, I knew I wanted to make sure our various campuses did something to support our students during finals, because I remember the stress and the strain. Graduate school was different—I did that from home and spent most my time just pacing my apartment or playing with my two cats and the laser pointer to put off finishing my final projects. Undergrad was the “authentic” experience. I went from classroom to classroom with my blue books and my mechanical pencils and took the exams necessary to pass, and by the end of each day I was exhausted, even if I’d only had one or two tests to complete. It’s the anxiety and the worry that wears you out. Will I completely forget everything I’ve been studying? What if my chronic stomach issues act up? What if I forget the date and time entirely? (Note, that only happens in nightmares. Unfortunately, I still get said nightmares.)

But here’s the thing: I’m realizing now that my finals experience, and those of others who graduated before 2020, is completely, totally different than what students are dealing with now. That’s been made more obvious by the response we got to our finals support event. It was a good response, mind you, but no where near as large as we would have had in the past. That’s because most finals have moved online, and after the penultimate week of the semester, students have disappeared.

Okay, not all students. We still have those that come to use the computers and print, we still have students whose exams are in-person due to needing hands-on evaluations. Largely, though, most our students are back to being online. And that makes perfect sense to me. We’re dealing with new variants in a global pandemic. When I was in undergrad, my biggest health issues during finals were food poisoning (Summer 2009, also my first semester back at college) and the flu (Fall 2010, the last time I will ever go without a flu shot). Now we’re dealing with Delta, Omicron, and potentially more variants of COVID-19 on the horizon. Yes, if you can stay home during a very stressful time when your immune system is probably being affected by your anxiety levels, please do so!

But what does that mean for our finals programming? I remember seeing events like “stress-free week” where libraries provide massages and aromatherapy and even cute animals to cuddle. Then there are the scavenger hunts, the movie screenings, the coloring sheets… All great stress-busters, but not possible when your student population has moved online.

A week-long schedule of events being held at the University of Dayton during finals week.
That’s a lot of stuff. Schedule from Katy Kelly’s article on Programming Librarian “Finals Week: We’ll Be There for You” https://programminglibrarian.org/blog/finals-week-we%E2%80%99ll-be-there-you

I don’t see things changing in the immediate future. So what can we do to address this sudden shift in the Finals Week experience? Well, for one, we can shift our events to when we know students will still be around. Our library had guitar performances in the week before finals, which was soothing for both our students in the library as well as for our busy staff. Additionally, the guitar students got to practice their recital pieces in a place full of little distractions like opening and closing doors, ringing phones, and people going here and there. We even had a tour of high schoolers come by.

A group of guitar students and their instructor stand in front of a Christmas display in the Pecan Library of STC.
Guitar instructor Jaime A. Garcia and his students performed at the Pecan Library at South Texas College.

Another option is to just dial it back. Our other event this year involved handing out popcorn and prizes. That’s all. It worked really well for most of our campuses. We aren’t booking masseuses or asking participation of frazzled students, but we’re still telling them hey, we’re here for you. We see you. Best of luck with this Finals Week, we know it’s tough. And I think that’s a good way to go about it. Students appreciate little gestures. Stopping to get popcorn and play a Plinko game for a prize might have been the first time they paused to do something other than study that day. I could see myself, more than a decade younger and on the verge of tears after a frustrating final exam, grateful for a snack and something fun to take home. Bouncy balls are still surprisingly popular.

That’s what’s important, after all. Maybe the big Finals Week bashes are a thing of the past, but that’s okay. We can still show students we care about them and be there. And that positive experience will bring them back next semester, so we can do it all again.

Virtual Events are Awesome! Here’s Why

I became an academic librarian in February of 2021. Starting a new position during a pandemic is… weird, to put it lightly. For one thing, I’ve only done one in-person event. Everything else has been virtual. If I want to be honest about it, I kind of want it to stay this way.

Don’t get me wrong! As a former children’s librarian, I know the euphoria that happens when you have a good preschool story time or you can see, in real time, children growing from the services you’re providing. Nothing made me happier than watching kids learn and appreciate art in my Art for All Ages program. There’s a certain energy to in-person events that you can’t capture online.

The author with middle school students at a recent literacy outreach.

That’s not the point of this blog post, though. I’m writing this to tell you that virtual events are, in their own way, totally awesome. They’re unique and they have their own advantages, and every time I think about what we’re capable of now thanks to technology, I’m blown away.

Let me break down why virtual events are totally awesome into four of their many benefits:

  1. You can get presenters from anywhere. I’m lucky in that I have a budget that would allow me to fly people in from other places and put them up in hotels. But is that the best use of those funds? Especially now, because tickets are so much more expensive and flying is so complicated. Webinars skip that whole step. Just this year, I’ve hosted lecturers from Florida, Maryland, Virginia, Washington, Massachusetts, California, and New Jersey. I didn’t have to worry once about booking a hotel or what would happen if a flight got canceled. My goal is to eventually get someone from a different continent. Imagine hosting a webinar with someone currently in Paris or Barcelona or Tokyo! How cool would that be?
  2. No masks or social distancing necessary. My friends and colleagues in public libraries know well the struggle of getting people to wear masks. Students at my campus have been incredibly courteous about wearing masks in our library and about campus, but it only takes one confrontation to ruin the atmosphere of an event. Then there are the logistics that go into limiting attendance and social distancing. No worries about that when everyone watching on their own devices in their own spaces. And if you plan for 50 but 200 show up, cool! Not as muh when you have limited seating in a real-world auditorium. Been there, done that. It wasn’t fun even pre-pandemic.
  3. Accessibility. Yes, I know the digital divide can make this a struggle—My college is in an area where there are large gaps in connectivity in communities. Thankfully, we’ve been awarded grants to address these issues. We distribute Wi-Fi hotspots and laptops now.

    Once students have those resources, our recorded webinars can be accessed from any device with an internet connection. This is a benefit to students with demanding schedules because of jobs, families, other classes, or any number of responsibilities they’re juggling. Webinars are also an excellent way to include students who continue to take classes from home because of mobility issues, vulnerability to COVID, or because online learning is the most convenient form for them. Students with hearing difficulties have access to subtitles and captions. They can replay portions of archived webinars if they need or want a refresher. YouTube also allows students to slow down or speed up a video to match their own pace. I love webinars for the same reason I loved e-books as a public librarian: the technology makes for a more accessible and user-friendly experience.
  4. Your audience is the world. This is especially true if you offer free webinars and advertise them on social media. We have had people tune in from all over the globe for a Shakespeare presentation in April, and it’s so neat to see attendees type in the chat that they’re tuning in from far, far away. Again, the excitement is different from watching a live audience absorb an idea or having a patron thank you in person, but it’s still thrilling.
Zoom Webinar held on September 1st, 2021, as archived on the South Texas College Library Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNLbMCUVaVk&t=7s&ab_channel=SouthTexasCollegeLibrary

Job satisfaction can be hard to come by in a virtual world, especially if you’re not someone used to cultivating relationships online. That said, webinars can still give those of us who have been seeking out that feedback a bit of what we lost when libraries shut down. Even once our situation changes, which (depending on who you ask) could be years into the future, I don’t see virtual programs going away. I’m certainly not going to stop. I find it too valuable a resource for our students and faculty.

I will definitely do in-person events again, but mostly for local presenters and programs that don’t translate well to online formats, like anything that involves food. I might be able to find job satisfaction through Zoom webinars, but until someone figures out how to digitize pizza, popcorn, and cookies, it’s just not going to have the same draw for our students. Who knows, maybe in the future we’ll be able to share a virtual pizza with a class while they listen to someone lecturing about cloud computing from Trinidad.

That sounds totally awesome to me.